Kevin Duffy: Once a top prospect, Tucci rediscovers baseball passion

Published 10:03 pm, Saturday, July 26, 2014

NORWALK -- Pete Tucci was always a baseball guy. Never worked with his hands, save for a high school gig washing dishes for a catering hall, because his hands were essential to the game and the game consumed him.

Marco Monteiro, his brother-in-law, worked with his hands from age 16 on. He was a veteran in the heating and air-conditioning business. With Tucci, he co-founded Four Seasons Heating and Cooling in 2002. Monteiro, too, was a baseball guy. Coached his kids. And he was a motorcycle guy. Owned three at all times. One race bike, two street bikes.

One day on a lunch break, Tucci wanted to try. He hopped on a 600cc bike in Monteiro's driveway, gave it gas and let out the clutch. Nothing. Monteiro told him to give it more.

"So I gun it," Tucci says. "I shoot forward, and then I get nervous, jam on the brakes and almost fly over the handlebar. I jump off the thing. And the bike falls over and cracks the plastic fender part."

"We're literally rolling in Marco's yard laughing for a half-hour. The neighbors must have been like, `What a couple of

idiots.' "

* * *

Pete Tucci sits today in a baseball office, 38-years old and still looking in baseball shape. A dash of gray sprinkles his head, but the former major league first-round pick still has some muscle, particularly in his arms, that jolts out from an otherwise gangly 6-foot-2 frame.

He's the founder of Tucci Lumber, an up-and-coming baseball bat company that has established some notable major league clientele. Troy Tulowitzki of the Colorado Rockies is exclusive with Tucci Lumber, as is Jose Altuve.

Tucci Lumber custom-designs bats for big leaguers. They've started to wholesale for high school and youth ballplayers. They're expanding, producing between 120 and 160 bats daily.

"We're into talks with Dick's and Sports Authority," Tucci says. "That'll be big."

A star at Norwalk High and Providence College in the 90s, Pete Tucci left the game for good in 2002, too frustrated with a hand fracture that sent his numbers spiraling, sent him back to Single A, the league he tore apart in 1998, and ultimately shattered his one and only life dream. Screw baseball, he thought. He wasn't going to be a 26-year-old starting from the bottom.

"I don't want to say I got blindsided, but it was like, `This isn't what my life is supposed to be,' " Tucci says.

He was grateful that Monteiro made him a partner in the air-conditioning and heating business, and he had a hell of a time every day with his brother-in-law. They'd ride together in the van all day and laugh on the job and sometimes throw wrenches when things went awry, before Monteiro would quickly invent a fix, which he always did. Tucci liked it enough. It was a career; it brought in money.

"But I always felt like a fish out of water," he says. "I always felt like a baseball player who was installing air conditioning."

One night when the kids were asleep, his wife, Amy, told him: "You know, you've got to find a way back into baseball, Pete. You're just not the same person. You've become more distant. You've lost that passion."

Pete's childhood had been built on the game. He was that Little Leaguer who told himself, "I'm making the big leagues, and I don't care what anybody says." There never was a Plan B.

"My whole life was driving toward making the majors," Tucci says.

And so it seems Tucci was golden in 1996, when he was drafted 31st overall by Toronto. And again in 1998, when he bombed 30 homers, drove in 112 runs and hit .318 for the Blue Jays' Single-A and Double-A affiliates. That year, 18 of his 30 home runs were to dead center or opposite field. After a 1999 hand fracture that also caused tendon damage, he never hit one over the right-field wall again.

Amy Tucci knew her husband had been a bat nerd. Throughout his career, Tucci was especially picky with "the greatest tool a baseball player can have." He used to sand down his bats, then press the wood out with a steel bar. He had success with Mizuno and Rawlings and loved the Mac25, Mark McGwire's model. When he'd order a new batch, he always felt it was "Christmas morning," although he'd always be disappointed because the customization was never exactly what he wanted.

So Amy implored Tucci, in 2009, to make his own bats, which didn't make sense to him. He wasn't mechanically inclined; everything he'd done with his hands, he'd learned from Marco. So why make bats?

A shipment of lumber arrived at Tucci's house one day. Amy had spent about $4,000 on the 60 pieces of wood and the equipment. She scheduled an appointment for her husband at The Woodworkers Club in Norwalk. By midnight, he had assembled the machinery. By 3 or 4 in the morning, his first bat was completed.

"It didn't look homemade," Tucci says.

As Tucci worked full-time with Monteiro, there was no bat business, just a garage operation that produced a handful each week for friends and kids in the area. But at least he was back in baseball.

* * *

Marco Monteiro died in March 2010. Massive heart

attack. Thirty-eight years young.

Tucci was in seventh grade when Monteiro, then a star three-sport athlete at Norwalk Central Catholic High, began dating Tucci's sister. They'd been like brothers ever since. It was Monteiro, after all, who delivered a back-up plan when Tucci's baseball flame had burnt out.

So Tucci knew there was no way he could go to work without Monteiro.

He wanted to sell the heating and cooling business and make bats full-time. His wife was behind the idea. His dad, Pete Sr., thought Tucci was nuts.

"How are you going to compete with these big companies?" asked his dad, the legendary Norwalk High baseball and football coach.

Tucci responded: "I think I have a really good product."

From his office at the Tucci Lumber warehouse, he tells the story of landing his first major league client, Pirates first baseman Gabby Sanchez. On his wall, there's a photo of that order form: A strip of yellow notebook paper, torn at the top, with the words "Gary 12 Tucci Bats" scribbled in blank ink.

Behind his desk, where he sets the measurements for each bat, there's a framed photo of Monteiro. He's smiling a closed-mouth smile, the edges of his mouth pushing back his 5 o'clock shadow.

"So much of what he taught me, and the ability and skills, is so translated into what I do now," Tucci says. "I'm doing this kind of like, through him. That's why his picture sits up here. I really felt he was this catapult that helped me, almost lit up my dream. My dream was getting to the big leagues. It didn't happen as a player, but I'm now living it in a whole different way."